One of the first cameras to make a permanent photographic image has left the UK for the first time to be part of an exhibition hosted by the Japan Camera Museum in Tokyo. The so-called Mousetrap camera, used by William Henry Fox Talbot in his early experiments in creating the negative process in the 1830s, is the center-piece of an exhibition entitled Kingdom of Elegance, Mahogany and Brass which shows off early cameras from the UK’s photographic industry. Sponsored by The British Embassy, the exhibition displays cameras owned by the Royal Photographic Society, the National Media Museum of the UK and a private collector called Kobayashi Yas.

Amoung the cameras in the show are the 1924 Hill Sky Camera, the first fisheye camera, a Houghton Butcher camera from 1907 designed into a lady’s handbag, a Reid 1 1959 camera based on the Leica 111b, as well as stereo cameras from 1905 and a panoramic camera from 1913. Also on display is one of the world’s first twin-lens reflex cameras, the Marion & Co Academy No1.

Credit: DC Watch

Credit: DC Watch

A report on the press preview by Japanese website Digital Camera Watch remarks on the fine woodwork of the cameras and compares them to pieces of furniture. The reporter is also amazed that the screw heads in the body of JH Darumeya’s stereo camera from 1860 are all perfectly aligned. It is perhaps because of such attention to detail that the UK has only historic cameras to show, and no current camera manufacturing.

The Mousetrap camera on display in the exhibition. Credit: DC Watch

A different Mousetrap camera held in the archive of National Media Museum. Credit: National Media Museum

Fox Talbot invented his little cameras after being frustrated at his inability to draw and a desire to ‘fix upon the paper’ the images made by the camera obscuras commonly used by artists to create outline drawings. He worked on creating light sensitive paper, and realized eventually that to increase the amount of light falling on his slow paper he needed a small camera with a large aperture. Thus he built a series of 2-3in boxes with lenses made from telescope eyepieces and used them for his experiments. He also commissioned a local carpenter to build some for him, which show a much greater degree of craftsmanship. The 1835 he succeeded in creating the first permanent paper negative, which is still visible today, and housed in the archive of the National Media Museum in Bradford, England. It was Talbot’s wife who gave them the name Mousetrap cameras, as they were small boxes and Talbot scattered them around the house.

It isn’t clear which of the several Mousetrap cameras is on display, but from the picture on the DC Watch website it looks a more sophisticated model and one probably made professionally. The camera is part of the Royal Photographic Society Collection, and is kept by the National Media Museum as part of its enormous camera archive.

I doubt that the loss of Britain's camera business had much to do with attention to detail. It's more simply explained by a failure to keep up with the quality and technical capabilities of, especially, European manufacturers from the 1900s and what little remained was wiped out by far eastern manufacturers in from the 1950s onwards. The same fate befell any number of industries manufacturing consumer equipment and often for the same reasons.

There are a few very specialists manufacturers of specialist equipment for the film, military and scientific markets. There's still quite a lot of highly specialised engineering companies around, but for the most part, the mass market has been abandoned for much consumer equipment and is now, of course, dominated by the far east.

Two things: 1. Australians and English-speaking Asians and Indians are frequent visitors to this site. And 2. You're overlooking the nuance that some people from the Indian subcontinent are now referring to themselves as Asians.

That's why it is best to just say the name of the country. It creates fewer hurt feelings and is more precise.

Far east is also geographically accurate. Bear in mind that the degrees east and west are measured from the meridian. For instance, Tokyo is at about 140 degrees east.

You might also like to ponder the term "Middle East". Is that now not allowed? Using your logic, that should be referred to as Western Asia as, Egypt and a very tiny part of Turkey are all actually part of the continent of Asia.

So "far east" just means a far eastern longtitude. At least in the sense I used it. If I was using it ina context that meant "culturally exotic" or some such, then maybe you'd have a point. But I clearly wasn't.

That's outside the site's purview, but given the relative lack of action in the digital camera realm of late, it's not a bad idea. Film photogs are lucky. Despite the disappearance of many processing venues, film quality itself (other than the lack of Kodak Tech Pan) has never been better.

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